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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 2:10, tested for ten days
The ten days of testing at Smyrna recall Daniel and his friends, tested ten days for refusing the king's food.
Revelation 2:10, in every translation this tool compares.
A coach who says the next ten days will show who you are is borrowing from a story every player knows. Daniel and his three friends would not eat the Babylonian king's food. They asked to be tested for ten days. Jesus tells the believers in Smyrna they will be tested and have ten days of trouble. Their test, like Daniel's, is about loyalty under pressure from a pagan power.
A test and ten days. The Greek of Daniel 1:12 reads peirason … hemeras deka, test us ten days; 1:14 repeats it. John has peirasthete and hemeron deka, be tested and ten days.
Daniel's test was a diet, and the outcome was good health. Smyrna's test is prison and perhaps death. Daniel asks for the test; at Smyrna the devil brings it. John keeps the number and the testing and drops the food. The sources agree the time is short. Beale grants it could be ten literal days.
Beale reads the echo closely. Daniel's friends refused food dedicated to idols at the king's table, and that table meant loyalty to a king who thought himself divine. Smyrna's Christians faced the same kind of demand from the cult of the emperor. The short test before Daniel's greater trials also hints that worse may follow.
Not Daniel's test. Daniel asked for ten days on vegetables and water. At Smyrna the ten days are prison and trouble from the devil. John borrows the number and the idea of a test, not the story.
Beale calls the ten days an allusion to Daniel 1:12-15, where the testing for ten days is mentioned twice, and reads the number as figurative for a short but severe trial. He notes that Judaism and the early church held up Daniel and his friends as models for those who would rather suffer than worship idols, and that Polycarp, later bishop of Smyrna, died for refusing to call Caesar Lord. Keener reads the ten days as a symbol drawn from Daniel's small test in 1:12, the first of greater trials. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, the ESV Study Bible, the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible's cross-references all name Daniel 1:12-14. The grade is drawn here: testing and ten days together point to that one chapter.
The sources agree on Daniel 1. They differ on the number. Beale grants it could be literal but reads it, with Wright and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, as a brief, bounded time of trial. Wright notes that a day can stand for a longer period in writing like John's. MacArthur says the jailing will be short. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible reads it as a sign of a swift execution to come.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 2:10
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 2:10
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 2:10
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 2:10-11
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 2:10
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 2:10
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 2:8-11
- Septuagint, Daniel 1:12 and 1:14, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 2:10
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 2:10
